


Lake Pontchartrain

by Vixen13



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Horror, Road Trips, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 17:39:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15296640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixen13/pseuds/Vixen13
Summary: "Come down to Lake Pontchartrain.Rest your soul and feed your brain.That's where you will get to see everything the water can be."





	Lake Pontchartrain

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever song fic! And it's horror! Am I doin' this right?
> 
> But really, I love Ludo's creepy songs. I thought to myself, "If I ever did a song fic, it would be a song that told a story." and this was the first thing that came to mind. Enjoy.

_“I’ll tell it like it happened.” Lance bounced his leg rapidly, eyes darting around the room at the people watching him closely. “It was Hunk, Pidge, and me.”_

 

 

“It’s my turn on the radio!” Pidge complained, stealing the auxiliary cord.

“I’m the driver!” Hunk immediately challenged. “There are _rules._ Lance! Tell Pidge there are rules.”

Lance yawned from where he was sprawled across the backseat. “Buddy, I would normally agree with you, but I’m real tired of your playlist.”

“Traitor.” Hunk scowled into the rearview mirror. “Put a seatbelt on.”

With a grumble, Lance sat up and buckled himself in. He leaned against door and stared at the monotonous view beyond. The roadtrip to nowhere had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now he was bored out of his mind. I-55 seemed neverending all of a sudden.

“Hey, aren’t we in Louisiana now?” Lance asked.

“We’ve been in Louisiana for a while,” Pidge sassed. “Pay more attention.”

“Well why haven’t we stopped for food? Isn’t this the state to get food? I’m hungry.”

“Ooo, that’s a good idea.” Hunk had that look on his face that meant he was dreaming of something delicious. “We should try some local cuisine.”

“Yeah, sure. Why not?” Pidge shrugged while scrolling through the playlist on her phone.

 

 

_“They both had crawfish,” Lance said, looking the nearest person in the eye, willing them to write it down. It was important! “Strictly chicken for me.”_

 

 

Lance crinkled his nose as the plates were set down in front of his friends at the tiny eatery they had stopped at. It was some place in the middle of nowhere that maintained their business solely because they were right off the interstate and nothing else was around. The chicken smelled delicious, at least. Lance just couldn’t bring himself to eat crawfish, though. They looked weird.

“What’s the point of trying new things if you’re not trying new things?” Hunk scolded.

“The spices on the chicken are new!” Lance stuck his nose in the air as he picked up a piece and took a bite, moaning at how perfectly juicy it was. “You guys are missing out.”

Pidge had already dug into her food. “Speak for yourself. This is pretty good.”

“I’m happy for you,” Lance deadpanned as he eyed the bug-like crustaceans with distaste before digging into his mashed potatoes. “So when are we planning to stop driving? When we hit the coast?”

Hunk shrugged. “I guess. It’d be nice to see the water.”

“Yeah!” Pidge cheared. “Let’s go swimming!”

It was at that point it began thundering, as if the sky was purposefully trying to ruin their plans. They all pouted as they looked out the window to the dark clouds rolling in. Well, maybe they would drive out of the rain. Lance tried to check his phone, but signal was awful and the weather app just kept spinning without updating. They really needed to get closer to a major city before he lost his mind.

The waitress gave them all a big grin and a wave when they left. Lance offered to drive next and the rain broke the minute he pulled back out onto the interstate. He opted to turn on the radio to a local station in case they updated the weather during a commercial break. It was pure southern soul that was playing, but that turned out to be pretty fun. They joined in on the songs they knew, belting out the chorus and dancing around in the car, volume cranked high to be heard over the rain.

“I’m too weak to fight,” Pidge sang.

“Listen to me, babyyy!” Hunk joined in, causing them to giggle like mad.

Before Lance could take his turn at singing Clarence Carter, the song abruptly shut off. They all went quiet, expecting a weather alert, but that wasn’t what they got. Some strange-ass local show started with odd, poorly recorded, almost eerie music playing in the background as they advertised some local attraction.

“Come down to Lake Pontchartrain. Rest your soul and feed your brain. That’s where you will get to see everything the water can be.” When the commercial finished on their odd little gimmick, it switched over to some random car dealership commercial.

“What’s a Lake Pontchartrain?” Lance asked.

“It’s that giant lake with the bridge over it that goes on forever,” Pidge informed. “I hear it’s creepy.”

“Maybe they’re trying to change things up to get more tourists,” Hunk suggested.

“Well that commercial is _not_ doing the trick,” Lance laughed.

The rain started coming down harder, forcing Lance to slow down since he could barely see through it. The clouds were so heavy now that the late afternoon sun was gone, leaving them in a murky gray world lit only by the headlights. The wind howled, slamming into the car and rocking it. They all made a noise of alarm.

As night fell and the storm got worse, Lance couldn’t help but think it was exactly that kind chaos from nature that could make you think the whole world’s going to hell.

“How far are we from a city that’s going to have someplace cheap to stay?” Lance asked.

“Do we have the money for that?” Pidge flicked at her phone, growling at the shitty signal. “There’s three of us for a reason. We were gonna drive non-stop.”

“Yeah, but…” Lance squinted through the rapidly moving windshield wipers. “I can barely see anything. We can at least stop somewhere with a tourist attraction and kill time until the storm passes.”

“I can’t connect to my maps because of the signal and gps can’t find us because of the storm.” Pidge huffed as she dropped her phone in her lap. “I have no idea where we are!”

“There’s an actual map in the glovebox,” Hunk said, his head poking between the two front seats. Hand it to me?”

So Lance continued on as Hunk diligently searched for some approximation of where they were on the giant map he had unfolded across the backseat. Pidge was holding her phone up for light, but it wasn’t helping much, especially since they could barely read the signs they were passing in order to determine what mile marker they were at.

“Pull off at the next exit,” Hunk directed. “We’ll at least be able to tell where we are then and form a plan.”

The storm continued to scream around them as they carefully made their way off the next exit. A sign pointed to a Choctaw Motel if they turned left off the exit ramp. Lance followed the directions until he could pull into their parking lot. Once the car was off, Hunk managed to determine that they were just outside of Slidell. They all leaned over the map as they deliberated their next move.

Wind howled again, battering at the car, the air filled with an uncomfortable electric buzz that had the hairs standing up on the back of their necks. It was a weird night, already creepy feeling as it was. What happened next was far, far worse.

 

 

_“Out of the bayou,” Lance murmured, eyes distant and haunted, “came a man.” He shivered at the memory. “Like the lake had a tongue.”_

 

 

Something slammed against the car and they all screamed, whirling around to find a withered old man leaning against the windshield. The had yellowed eyes and black teeth bared in a grimace. He banged on the windshield, screaming like a demon at the top of his lungs. Lance was nearly frozen in horror, air refusing to even enter his lungs.

“Come down to Lake Pontchartrain,” the man cried. “Rest your soul and feed your brain.”

“What the fuck?!” Pidge screamed.

“Call the cops!” Hunk yelled.

Ice crawled up Lance’s back and a stone settled in his stomach. Something deep in his soul told him that the police would not be able to save them. He couldn’t say why, only that the man’s eyes bore into him with all the weight of an endless chasm. The screams that rose over the deafening sound of the rain seemed inhuman.

“Free for you and all your friends,” the man’s fist slammed against the windshield hard enough to rattle it. Hunk’s screams went higher in pitch. “Crawfish ‘til the bitter end.”

“Leave us alone! We’re calling 911!” Pidge shouted in return, but the man acted as if he didn’t even see her.

“Come down to Lake Pontchartrain!”

Something sinister hung in the air with the words. Lance didn’t want to wait and hear the end of it. Every instinct he had was on high alert, telling him to run. He slammed the keys back into the ignition.

“Wade to where the shallows break!” The man’s tongue rolled around his black teeth like it wasn’t even needed to form the words. Terror hummed under Lance’s skin. “That’s where you will get to see everything the water can be.”

And just like that, Lance was driving out of there as fast as a Camry could. He floored it back towards the interstate, but the tires hydroplaned on the entrance ramp. Everything was flooded from the rain, a veritable river of it pouring down the tilted on-ramp. That wasn’t stopping Lance. Some visceral instinct was telling him to get away and get away fast. Pidge and Hunk were still babbling and upset. Lance’s ears were ringing too bad to even hear them.

All the could hear were the haunting cries of that terrifying person.

So Lance turned back onto the highway and took the first road that looked clear, driving them through the dark looming trees and into the woods. In retrospect, it was a bad move. The road was small and unlit, making it easy to disappear in the rain. He couldn’t see where he was going at all. The tires skidded along the wet pavement as he took a turn a little too hard because he hadn’t been able to see it coming.

Watery light was coming from up ahead — a sign lit in the dark, wet hellscape around them. Lance prayed that it was the welcome sign to a city, someplace with dry, well lit gas stations and sanity. As they got closer, the blurry words finally cleared up into something legible. Lance almost screamed.

 

 

_“I stood on the brakes when I saw the sign,” Lance admitted, voice trembling, body curling in on himself, his head rapidly shaking side to side as he tried to eradicate the now crystal clear memory._

 

 

** Lake Pontchartrain **

“No, no, no, no!” Lance chanted, his throat constricting. He knew with vivid and painful clarity that they shouldn’t be anywhere near that lake. They had to get away! The inside of his head was so loud with clanging alarm bells that he could barely think through it.

“There’s somebody in the water!” Hunk yelled in a panic. His voice sounded muffled to Lance, like the rain was already drowning them.

Hunk opened the back door and launched himself into the inky blackness and toward the swells of the lake. Pidge was hot on his heels, ready to jump in for a rescue. Lance grabbed for Pidge’s shirt and missed. Didn’t they understand? They couldn’t go out there! Whatever was in the water… it wasn’t human!

“Come back!” Lance shouted. His face felt wet. He couldn’t tell if it was sweat, rain, or tears. Why the hell would they leave the car? Had they not just seen everything Lance had? Did they not feel how much danger they were in?

That was when he heard it. There was no mistaking it. It was the music from that weird radio commercial, except it wasn’t grainy this time, it was muffled and echoing. Someone was singing it. No… Multiple people were singing it. Voices were calling to them from under the lake. They sang a siren song, louder and louder, demanding that the three friends join the others in the dark abyss.

Come down to Lake Pontchartrain.

_Come down to Lake Pontchartrain._

**_Come down to Lake Pontchartrain._ **

 

Ç̛̟̞̥̱̜͖̽̔͊̂̓̔̿ͅo̶̢̡̡̝̤͚̣̥̔͆͌̑̊͜ṃ̪̫̤̇̎͂̎̈͜ê̸̛̗̮̲͓̦̹̫̝̹̊̏́̄ d̷̢̡̘̬̾̉͑͘̕͜͜͡o̥̜̼̹̹̝̊̈́̆͛͡w̵̤̣̻̦͐͌̓̓̓͘͘̕͘͢͡ņ̴̤͚̹͍̦͍̰̋̃̄̓͊ t̶̖͖̞̞̹̝̮͇͐̔̑̽̑͑͝o̸̼̗̩͎͎͐̔̾̑̂͘ L̪̬̭̠͍͙̞̤͍̂̓̒̀̐̐͠a̶̧̗͇͙̘̳͇̲̐͒̏̎̕̚͘͡k̩͓̫̠̦̺̓͋͛̎̅͛̍̈e̷̡̙̯̲̣̰̜̻̪̿̑̏̂̓͗̀͌͠ͅ P̢̺̫̝͆̊̎͒͟͝͞ö̸̻̠͓̙̫̗̣̳̌͗̓̎̑͛͆͜͝ͅn̤̝̩͉̞̼̺͇̉̍͒͗̌́͠ͅt̸̡̼̠̝̠̘͑̉̋̄͜͡c̨̗͎̹͈͓̯̾̈́̀̉̏̑͝ͅh̢̡̲̜̱̰̲̜̘̎̔̃̍̉͘̚͠ả̢̘̱͔͇̭̺̹̹̌̒̑͌ͅř̴̨̢̭̝͎̲͈̏̇̔̌͘͢ṫ̖͈̟̜͈̹̳͉̒̒͌̑͜͝r̨̦̻̩̼̱̖̪̓̿̿̆͑ͅa̲̻̰̳̹̟̝͋̏̋̑̐̆͂̋̕͟ͅi̷̧̹̪̰͚̜͍̜̖̮̋̑̌̓̌̍n̢͓̻̫̺̠͙̼̯̭͌̅́̐͌̌̽͘

  


The crawfish were screaming, a noise that rang along every nerve in Lance’s body, making him tremble, making it hard to breathe. The waves danced in time to the sounds of screeching crustaceans and hypnotic singing. Lance watched helplessly as his friends went deeper into the churning waves.

The water… it climbed.

The rain caused the lake to swell, like it was some kind of monster breathing. Or worse, a monster opening its jaws for a meal. Lance watched in mute terror as the lake opened wide, the monster roaring deep and loud. It rattled the trees and the metal frame of the car. It rattled Lance’s very bones.

The black water churned and pulled his friends inside, the both of them disappearing into the waiting mouth of a primordial evil. Lance screamed, one arm uselessly outstretched as the rain pelted him with a thousand tiny stinging pin pricks. The seatbelt held him in place as he uselessly begged for their lives back.

Lake Pontchartrain did not care to listen.

 

 

_“That’s how it happened!” Lance cried, tears rolling down his face. “Why would I lie?”_

_The people surrounding him wrote on their clipboards, their eyes cold and unflinching. Lance thrashed in his bonds, the fabric of the straight jacket pulling at the joints in his elbows and shoulders. He had to make them understand! Make them listen! There was an evil out there. The crawfish. They had to protect people!_

_“There were no bodies,” Lance reasoned. “I’ve got none to hide.”_

_And it was true. They could search the lake for years and come up empty because they hadn’t drown. They had been eaten. Lance was breathing too fast and too loud as he thought about it. The horrible bass bellow of the monster rang in his head._

_“I’m just a boy who lost his friends in the rain,” Lance pleaded with the person closest to him, staring at the stark white coat that covered dull blue scrubs. “Any more questions…”_

_Lance stared up at the ceiling, body going cold, emotions pouring out of him in a rush and leaving him numb. “Just go and ask Lake Pontchartrain.” _

**Author's Note:**

> Lake Pontchartrain by Ludo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuhYXOZ7ZTY
> 
> http://thatvixenchick.tumblr.com  
> So by popular request, my cats have their own tumblr now. https://vixen13scats.tumblr.com/


End file.
